Back in 2004, the European Union (EU) wrapped up an investigation of Microsoft's business practices. It concluded that the company was not treating its competitors fairly, preventing them from fully interacting with its Windows operating systems and, indirectly, putting many of those competitors out of business. The EU threw an approximately $1.2-billion dollar fine at Microsoft and that was that. However, years later, the EU isn't exactly happy with Microsoft's progress, and has just fined the company another
$1.35-billion for failure to comply.
The combined fines total roughly $2.5-billion, a sum of money large enough to make even Microsoft notice. The new fine stems from Microsoft not taking enough steps to open up its operating systems to competitors. Microsoft did open its systems up and provide information to competitors on how to inter-operate with Windows, but charged high licensing fees that, according to the EU, were unreasonable.
The EU has never had to issue a second fine like this before, and, according to Microsoft, it won't have to again. The company has recently been
taking some steps to "open" things up, including publishing documentation about its developer interfaces and exposing the details of its Office format. Is this a true shift for the company or just a diversion to make investigators happy? Time will tell.
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